Personally, I think the world would have been better off without it. But some, sadly, need religion. They need "truth" fabricated, instead of thinking for themself. I take the evidence presented to me, and come to a conclusion based on facts. "Faith" is a word to keep the illution of truth at place. I KNOW most disagree, since many are religious. Religion has done some good, but in my opinion, it has done far more evil.
I don't even really consider absorbing a pagan holiday into a religious calendar to be a bad thing. I mean, they wanted converts, so what better way than to redirect what people are worshiping? It's really pretty ingenious. But I agree, it doesn't really have anything to do with the bible or Jesus.
The Catholic Church was a very powerful and quite intelligent organization, I agree. Very good business move.
As far as the whole "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar" fallacy that seems to never completely die, I think that Devoid summed up an excellent point: just because the Bible SAID that he stated something doesn't actually mean that he did.
Besides, delusion in one area does not automatically discredit the other statements that you make. He could have honestly thought he was the Son of God and still spouted out worthwhile, ethical positions.
This is kind of off topic, but I was just reading the Coptic Gospel of Thomas from a book I have called Lost Scriptures (which I suggest picking up if you like to read on religion). I want to post a few quotes from it that are kind of interesting to me. But I'll give some background first.
Some dudes found it digging for fertilizer near the village of Nag Hammadi and a bunch of manuscripts were found and authenticated. One of them was the Gospel of Thomas. It has the largest collection of Jesus' sayings. According to some early Christian legends, Thomas was Jesus' twin brother [insert shocking music here]. Anyway, they are purely sayings, not miracles, not stories, just sayings. Some of the teachings are similar to the other New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Some scholars have maintained that the sayings of Thomas may be closer to what Jesus actually taught than what we find in the New Testament.
FIRST FREAKING LINE reads:
And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
"If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you."
Then this last one stuck me kind of odd. Was he talking about energy?
"If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image...we are its children...When they ask 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement."
Those are pretty interesting, I remember reading them a while back. I seem to remember a story about Jesus when he was like 12 and this bully kept picking on him so he turned the guy into a tree, broke off all his branches and threw them into the water. That is awesome!!!
Delusion would fall into the 'Lunatic' category. If one is really delusional enough to call themselves God and claim the ability to Forgive Sins, then I would consider them to be unstable in the head. (Label it as you will)
Bottom line: I'm not going to devote my life to follow anyone who mistakenly claims to be God.
oh, sorry about that. I was mainly targeting Daniel. You can delete if you want to. And yes, the comparing of heaven to a mustard seed is quite hilarious indeed!
Well,I think that if we just found some,some special religion,that we all could agree on...the world would be a place where it is very peaceful,i'm no hippie but...Peace + Love =Religion.
It would be possible...some day..when there isn't war or attacks....
The last time someone tried to unite people under the same religion, millions of Jews were killed. And every time in the past history that someone tried it, the same kind of thing happened. Not always with a concentration camp, mind you, and not in such large numbers, but still killing occurred. Besides, how are you going to unite people who only believe in science under a supposed "agreed upon" religion? And I know I certainly wouldn't give up my beliefs without a fight. I don't know about you, but I certainly DO NOT want to see those mistakes repeated.
First, the holocaust was about ethnicity, not religion - that's why it's called ethic cleansing. Second, if everyone only believed in science, there wouldn't be an agreed upon religion, there would be no religion. Third, you don't need to unite people at all, you can't. Heck, not even people in one country can unite under a "banner" or "religion."
